Can
Raşit Çelikezer, 2011
Turkey | Format: 35mm | 106 minutes

Winner of an award for Artistic Achievement at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, Can begins as a contemporary couple, Ayşe and Cemal, struggle to find a way to conceive a child together. When modern medicine comes up short, they resort to illegal means, but the stress eventually causes the couple’s relationship to unravel. Meanwhile, a single mother is raising her little boy, Can, in something less than ideal fashion. Writer-director Raşit Çelikezer’s remarkable film can be seen as a tribute to “Yeşilçam,” the popular Turkish melodramas of the Fifties and Sixties, wrapped in a provocative modernist narrative. Can is full of wild and weird coincidences and sudden shifts of action, while its two principal storylines first run parallel, then cross and double back, mixing time frames and often showing effects before causes. An altogether fascinating work that combines the best of both the old and new Turkish cinemas, Can introduces another fine director to the nation’s impressive roster of film artists.

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